Assessment of learning experiences of Engineering N4-N6 students of Motheo Tvet College using natural language toolkit and recognition of speech system

Abstract

This research work explores the learning experiences of Engineering students of Motheo Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College. Utilising the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and recognition of speech system, it endeavours to assess difficulties experienced by Engineering students. It fills the hole in understanding the challenges being faced by Engineering students of the selected college. This work centres around using a computer system to aid in timely assessments of the learning encounters of Engineering learners without introducing a bias. The example of the investigation included fifteen (15) students of the last trimester at the Department of Engineering and Literature at Motheo TVET College. The instrument of the examination was a semi-organised meeting of the students. The subjective information was broken down utilising open, pivotal and specific coding. Five-dimensional difficulties rose as significant subjects, namely, (a) scholarly difficulties (b) learning environment challenges, (c) aptitude difficulties, and (d) mental difficulties and components impacting the difficulties. These difficulties were ordered into further sub-topics. A speech recognition system was used initially to transcribe the interview, however, there were substantial difficulties as a result of accent and dialects of the students. The interviews were later transcribed verbatim. Tesch thematic analysis and NLTK were used to analyse the participants’ interviews. Thematic analysis is a clustering method in qualitative research that focuses on identifying patterned meaning through the dataset. Verification of analysed was executed to establish its credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability. Furthermore, the researcher used reflexivity to eliminate biases, as he is the only analytical tool in data analysis and interpretation of results. Ethical consideration was discussed as it guides and protects the relationship between the researcher and the participants. It covered the permission to conduct the study at the college, and by the participants; their autonomy, confidentiality, and right to no harm. The results show that these difficulties are deterrents to learners’ scholarly achievements. They ought to be attended to sufficiently in order to improve students ‘success rate. A couple of recommendations are also made so as to reduce the impact of these challenges on academic pursuits of learners.